not presented it, there was a definitor in that chapter who would have made it, because he was likewise a native of the same city of Zaragoça, and a son of the famous convent of preachers of that city. His name was Fray Carlos Clemente Gant, [63] long an excellent minister of the province of Nueva Segovia. It is well that the sons of that noble city never cease, wherever they are, to see within their souls that great sanctuary which the city enjoys and in the shade of which they were bred. Though father Fray Geronimo was eager to carry out the orders of the chapter, he was unable to do so until the beginning of September, on account of the obstacles placed in his way by the devil, who saw how much he was to lose by the expedition. He finally embarked to go up the river with one of his companions, father Fray Luis de Oñate, [64] who called himself here by the name of del Rosario; he was a native of Sevilla, and a son of the convent of Portaceli in the same city, a religious of much virtue though of few years, and therefore very well suited to such enterprises. All of his qualifications were necessary, because in the midst of that voyage, at one most dangerous passage, full of great rocks, where the waves are high and the current is stronger, they were unable for three days to make a yard of headway by the greatest efforts that they could put forth, such was the force of the current--or of the devil, who, being unable to do more, strove in this way to interfere with the fathers on their journey. At last by patience and perseverance, which conquer everything, they reached the end of their difficulty. They arrived in the first village of the Mandayas on September 7, the eve of the Nativity of our Lady--a feast which, among the other feasts of the Virgin, is celebrated in Zaragoça with the greatest solemnity by the chapter and the clergy of the holy church of the Pillar. The Indians received them with great demonstrations of joy, after their fashion; and with much greater joy, though a spiritual one, the fathers celebrated on the following day the birth of the Virgin--for it seemed to them wonderfully appropriate to begin the foundation of this conversion on this day--the Virgin herself adopting it, so that, as if it were her own, she might look upon it with the eyes of a mother, and of one so tender. The material (that is, the minds of the listeners) being so well disposed, it was an easy thing for the word of God to kindle in it; for it is like fire, as St. Jerome says in his comment upon the prophet Abdias [i.e., Obadiah], which consumes the straw and purifies the grain for the Lord. Hence the first thing which father Fray Geronimo did, because of his deep spiritual insight and his great experience as a minister, was to get at them under the straw of their vices and superstitions, and to place before them immediately the pure grain and clean seed of the faith. He began, as St. Paul did, in the eleventh chapter of the